Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is already considered to be his magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.

Moreover, I soon discovered that they also frequently
featured as video-thumbnail photographs for various YouTube
videos concerning giant snakes, but invariably they were conspicuous only by
their absence within the videos themselves. In short, they were simply being used
as clickbait (just like the fake anaconda ones), enticing potential viewers to
access the videos.

The snake portrayed in these fake photos is readily
recognisable as a reticulated python Python reticulatus. Now, I am well
aware that this species is the world's longest species of modern-day snake,
with specimens regularly exceeding 20.5 ft, but even the current confirmed record-holder – a truly
astonishing individual 32 ft9.5 in long that was shot in 1912 on the Indonesian
island of Sulawesi (=Celebes) – would not measure up in any sense of those
words to the monstrous mega-python in the photographs under consideration here.
Moreover, even forced perspective would be sorely challenged to yield a
size-based visual illusion anywhere near as spectacular as the serpent depicted
in them.

Clearly, therefore, these photos were fakes, produced
by adding small images of humans into some original, genuine photograph of a
reticulated python in order to make the latter snake appear immense, but the
only way to verify this was to trace that original, genuine photo. Happily,
however, unlike the search for the original anaconda image, finding this python
precursor was much easier to accomplish. I soon discovered a version that was
identical with the others relative to the python itself but lacked any people
in it, only depicting the snake, so this was obviously the original, genuine photo
whose image had been appropriated by the hoaxer(s). It was present on many
sites dealing with snakes, and not surprisingly it was especially popular on
southeast Asian sites, because the reticulated python is native to southeast
Asia. But none of these sites provided any source for it, so where had this photograph
originated?

Fortunately, within a very short time I succeeded
in tracing it back to the website RFUK, or Reptile Forums UK in full, and
specifically to a post by a RFUK member with the user name Mikee. On 15 September
2009, Mikee had posted on this site a number of photographs of some of his pet
snakes, past and present, and one of these pictures was the sought-after original,
genuine python photo lacking people in it (click here
to access this particular RFUK page and scroll down it until you come to
Mikee's post and photos). Here is that photograph (#3 as posted by Mikee):

By clicking Mikee's name alongside his post, I was
able to access his public profile on RFUK, and I discovered that his real
identity was Michael Andrews, from Essex, England. His RFUK profile also included links to his
Facebook page, and when I accessed this I found the same python photograph in
one of his FB photo albums too (it is publicly accessible, so click here
to view this python photo in it). The album in question is entitled 'My
Passion', and is devoted to photographs of various of Michael's pet reticulated
pythons. The specific python photograph under investigation by me here had been
uploaded into this FB album by Michael on 17 May 2010.

Consequently, the mystery of the mega-python image is
a mystery no longer – Michael's original, genuine photograph of one of his pet
reticulated pythons has simply been photo-manipulated by creator(s) unknown, and
without Michael's knowledge, to produce a range of fake pictures of purportedly
gargantuan pythons that have flooded the internet and are proving particular
popular as clickbait images for uploaded videos there. Interestingly, however,
using TinEye's Reverse Image Search the earliest fake version that I was able
to track down online had been uploaded on 16 May 2016, so unlike the fake anaconda
photos these python equivalents seem to have been created only fairly recently.

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